The sun had not yet cleared the eastern ridge when Jake Harmon stepped into the barn.
The air still held the chill of night. Pale light filtered through cracks in the boards. Dust drifted in the beams like slow-moving smoke.
One stall stood empty.
Colt Barnes was already there, one hand resting on the gate. He didn’t turn when Jake entered.
“She’s gone,” Colt said quietly.
Jake nodded.
The old sorrel mare had been failing for weeks. Faithful as sunrise. She’d pulled wagons, packed supplies, and carried Mary into town more than once through wind and sleet. Yesterday she had lain down and not risen again.
Colt cleared his throat. “Feels strange, don’t it? Barn don’t sound the same.”
Jake stepped beside him. “No,” he said softly. “It don’t.”
For a long moment, neither man spoke.
Finally Colt said, “You ever think on it, Jake? All this work… all this living… and then it’s just… done?”
Jake leaned against the rail.
“If that was the end,” he said slowly, “we’d be pitiful men.”
Colt glanced at him.
Jake continued, steady as a fence post set deep: “Paul wrote that if Christ wasn’t raised from the dead, then preaching’s empty, faith’s empty, and we’re still in our sins. Said we’d be of all men most miserable.”
Colt studied the vacant stall.
“But,” Jake said firmly, “Christ is risen.”
The words settled into the quiet barn like weight on solid timber.
Colt’s jaw tightened. “I reckon that changes things.”
“It changes everything,” Jake replied. “If death’s the last word, then this stall is just loss. But if Christ walked out of His grave… then death ain’t the boss anymore.”
A breeze slipped through the barn boards.
Jake looked toward the open doorway where dawn was beginning to glow.
“Paul said we won’t all sleep forever. Said the trumpet’ll sound, and the dead shall be raised. This mortal will put on immortality.”
Colt gave a slow nod. “Death swallowed up in victory.”
Jake’s mouth curved slightly. “That’s right. ‘O death, where is thy sting?’”
They stood in the hush of the barn.
Colt finally asked, “So what do we do in the meantime?”
Jake turned toward the light.
“We keep working,” he said. “We mend fence. We plant. We help neighbors. Not to outrun death… but because we already know who beat it.”
The first rays of sun broke across the pasture.
Jake added, steady and sure:
“Therefore… be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know your labor is not in vain.”
He paused, then reached into his saddlebag and pulled out his worn GAB, his Give Away Bible.
“Before we go finish that Roaring Rapids dam Caldwell wants built, I’ve been working on something from Revelation.”
He opened the thin pages.
“John said he heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea saying, ‘To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.’”
Colt listened quietly.
Jake closed the Bible gently.
“Sadie worked hard for us,” he said. “Wore herself out honest. Boone too, one day. All creatures belong first to the One who made ’em. I like to think they’ll join that chorus in ways we don’t yet understand.”
Colt rested his hand once more on the stall gate, but not in grief now.
The stall was empty.
But the barn did not feel empty anymore.
Outside, the light had fully come.
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